If I Had a Hammer: Tools of the Trade for Content Copywriters

You can’t just sit down at your keyboard, armed with creativity, inspiration, a fresh idea and grit anymore. Today, technology wants you to believe that you are passé if you don’t bend your will to the digital revolution and buy at least a couple of “toys” to improve your writing with. Personally, I believe that you can be successful without buying a “digital crutch” to use as a content security blanket. However, these devices make things easier and save valuable time. So, here are a few toys that can make your life easier. (Alphabetically ordered.)

A Content Writer’s Dream Team

This free tool will analyze your headline to determine the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score. As you know, reaching your customers in an deep and emotional way is a key to successful copywriting, and your headline is unquestionably the most important piece of copy you use to reach prospects. Your headline will be analyzed and scored based on the total number of EMV words it has in relation to the total number of words it contains. This will determine the EMV score of your headline.

Analyze what content performs best for any topic or competitor. Find the key influencers to promote your content. BuzzSumo gives you insight into what content is working, and the influencers amplifying it. BuzzSumo takes content discovery to a new level using social search. There is no shortage of content on the web, the key is filtering out the content that resonates with audiences, the content that is currently trending and the content about to trend. A BuzzSumo search will find most shared content across all the main social networks.

Copyscape provides a free plagiarism checker for finding copies of your web pages online, as well as two more powerful professional solutions for preventing content theft and content fraud: Copyscape Premium provides more powerful plagiarism detection than the free service, plus a host of other features, including copy-paste originality checks, batch search, private index, case tracking and an API. Copysentry provides comprehensive protection for your website by automatically scanning the web daily or weekly and emailing you when new copies of your content are found. Copyscape also offers free plagiarism warning banners for your website to warn potential plagiarists against stealing your content, a free tool to compare two web pages or articles, and a comprehensive guide to dealing with plagiarism.

The Headline Analyzer is an awesome tool to help you achieve the best possible blog post headline and help will grab the attention of your audience. The Headline Analyzer is available in all New CoSchedule calendar plans.

CoSchedule is an easy drag-and-drop content marketing calendar that allows you to plan, create, and promote your content all in one place. It saves you time and helps you grow your audience through smart marketing plans and efficient team collaboration. Content and Social all in one place. Reschedule social messages, content, or projects from anywhere on the calendar. Simply drag and drop your content to a new day and anything associated with it will automatically adjust to its new time as well. CoSchedule isn’t just for your blog content and social campaigns. It’s about organizing EVERYTHING you do. Whether you write blog posts, create weekly podcasts, design infographics, or manage full-scale feature launches.

Collect, nurture, and share ideas across desktop and mobile platforms with Evernote. Your thoughts are always with you, always accessible, always in sync. Inspiration strikes anywhere. Evernote lets you capture, nurture, and share your ideas across any device. Create a project to-do list. Jot down a reminder. Or snap a picture of a sketch. A note can be anything you want it to be. And once you make a note, it’s accessible wherever you go, forever. Capture a note once, and it’s instantly available on all your devices. Never worry about where you saved something because it’s in Evernote, and Evernote is wherever you are.

Grammarly makes sure everything you type is easy to read, effective, and mistake free. Instantly fix over 250 types of errors, most of which Microsoft Word can’t find. Find the perfect word every time with context-optimized synonym suggestions. Learn about your mistakes so that you can avoid them next time. Whether you’re writing emails, essays, or social media posts, Grammarly has your back. “Grammarly quickly and easily makes your writing better.” – Forbes.

The Hemingway Editor cuts the dead weight from your writing. It highlights wordy sentences in yellow and more egregious ones in red. Hemingway helps you write with power and clarity by highlighting adverbs, passive voice, and dull, complicated words. Use Hemingway Editor wherever you write—on the train, at the beach, or in a coffee shop with spotty Wi-Fi. As long as you have your computer, you’ll have Hemingway. Hemingway handles everything you need for a web page, including HTML headings, formatting and links. Once you’re ready to publish, export as HTML or Markdown for your blogging platform or CMS.

Keyword Tool Helps You Find The Keywords That People Are Typing Into Google Search Box Keyword Tool Is The Best Alternative To Google Keyword Planner And Other Keyword Research Tools Here are a few reasons why: Free version of Keyword Tool generates up to 750+ long-tail keyword suggestions for every search term. Unlike Keyword Planner or other tools, Keyword Tool is extremely reliable as it works 99.99% of the time. You can use Keyword Tool absolutely for free, even without creating an account.

The famous title generator! Use it to come up with an array of titles for your next blog post or presentation. Some are funny. Some are shocking. All useful. Caution: It’s addictive. This link also will connect you to a bevy of other timesaving marketing tools such as Portent’s SEO Page Review Chrome Extension, Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) Tool, Click Worth Calculator, Responsinator (tests a web site’s response codes), The Marketing Stack Explorer, and The Link Recovery Tool.

Get tons of keyword ideas for free with Übersuggest: suggest on steroids! Use Übersuggest to quickly find new keywords not available in the Google Keyword Planner. Take your keyword research to the next level with tons of keyword ideas for SEO, PPC and your next content marketing campaign. Need more data? Install the free Keyword Everywhere extension for Chrome and Firefox and you’ll get search volume and CPC for free.

What terrible business jargon do you need unsucked? Put a phrase or a word into Unsuckit and hit the magic button. The tool will come up with interesting and often funny suggestions. This is one you should click the link for and give it a whirl yourself.

Famous Last Words

Whether you choose to use the tools or to simply rely upon your own wits and bang your story out on paper and pencil or an old school IBM Selectric, creativity comes from deep in the mind and soul. All the tools in the world won’t write your content for you. They will however make the job a little easier by supporting your efforts.

The Hank Moody School of Creative Writing

“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.” – Steve Jobs

The Big Kumbaya in CyberSpace

Sharing and discussing content posts brings us together as one. Sharing ideas, answering and asking questions makes us all strong. Please take the time to share what works for you. What has your experience been with these tools. What do you like to use that isn’t on the list?

Thank you for taking time out to read this piece. Your time is greatly appreciated. To hear the rantings of other voices on the same subject:

Gerry Nason is a Senior Content Copywriter for HiP B2B. He also has extensive experience with generating high quality executive leads. Gerry worked for six years as the Producer & Director of a weekly music show, appearing on cable access TV in New England. During those six years, In Tune won 18 awards for video excellence.